Vicky Stone, a Graduate Structural Engineer at Romsey based consulting civil and structural engineering company WFBA has gained an award for her dissertation examining the issues and tensile strength of a Bamboo joinery technique for use in the construction industry.
The Student Prize was issued by the Surrey Regional Group of the Institute of Structural Engineers for her experimentation into finding connection solutions that will help allow Bamboo to become more common place in construction practices within the UK and other strictly regulated countries.
“I can tell you so much about Bamboo now after the 6 months of investigation into how it can be attached to other bamboo sections and different building materials without compromising its strength. Bamboo has been used as a building material across Asia and South America for thousands of years but the buildings have traditionally been lashed together. Whilst that has worked well for those structures, lashings cannot be standardised or regulated so the challenge has been to find a consistent and acceptable way of securing bamboo sections to one another and to other materials that could satisfy British and European Standards,” said Vicky Stone from Bournemouth.
With the assistance of her carpenter father, Vicky was able to test different methods of permanently attaching bamboo. Some bamboo species have the compressive strength comparable to concrete and as well as being lighter, can have good strength to weight ratio like steel so has the potential to be used as a more sustainable choice.”
“We discovered that the connections we developed were able to withstand significantly more load than we anticipated and with further development, these values could be improved upon. I intend to publish the findings in the near future,” said Vicky Stone.
WFBA Director Nick Groves commended Vicky’s approach to the dissertation. “We are a team of specialist engineers that design using most common materials. Perhaps one day it will not be unusual to have a Bamboo specialist.”
Vicky, who recently gained a first for her Bachelor of Engineering degree is now to study for her Chartered Membership of the Institute of Structural Engineers
Photo Caption: Vicky Stone with her Institute of Structural Engineers certificate.